• hangover •

Meaning: 1. Something or someone left over from a prior time period; a vestige, a holdover, a leftover, a remnant. 2. The unpleasant effects of overdrinking the night before or a short period before, a katzenjammer.

Notes: Today's word is an interesting bit of evidence of the importance of word order in language: an overhang is quite a different thing from a hangover. The only derivation ever tried for this word is hangoverish reported in 1939. The word currently appears only 5,350 times on the Web, mostly in dictionaries.

In Play: First things first: "This dorm must be a hangover from an old insane asylum!" The second meaning was derived from the first by means of narrowing to a strictly pejorative sense: "I had such a hangover from the party last night that I think I might have flunked the chemistry exam."

Word History: Today's Good Word is obviously a compound comprising hang + over. Hang, the verb, is related to Hittite gang- "to hang", Sanskrit sankate "wavers", and Latin cunctari "to delay", so the Proto-Indo-European root pervaded the Indo-European languages pretty thoroughly. The original past tense was hanged, but a northern British form, hung, emerged in the 16th century as the past participle, then moved on to take over as the past tense form. Hanged remained only in the legal sense, legalese being more conservative than the general language. Stonehenge originally meant "stone gallows", presumably from the resemblance to gallows of the three-piece ensembles.

Since none of us here at alphaDictionary suffer from a hangover today, Dawn, Andrew, Brian, and I are in good condition to wish each and everyone in the Agora the happiest and most prosperous New Year.

But I suspect an overabundance of your readers, even the teetotallers in the crowd, are experiencing hangovers from a surplus of holiday food! But I'm sure we would all return your good cheer with a Happy New Year to all of you.

"Since none of us here at alphaDictionary suffer from a hangover today, Dawn, Andrew, Brian, and I are in good condition to wish each and everyone in the Agora the happiest and most prosperous New Year."

God forbid any of the Goodwordians would suffer the effects of holiday excess. I can see them now in my mind's eye standing at starched attention , the very model of well-scrubbed Christian Temperance and sampler-like perfection. No black sheep in this lot. No crappy crapulence here. Still, I do hope the Goodwordians take time to stray ever so slightly (but not "tightly") from the path of righteousness long enough to imbibe a little Christmas cheer. ( Provided, of course, none is a minor, or under a medical or prophylactic restriction.)

As for myself, I plan to pay due respect to Bacchus, to fill my cup with holiday mirth "beaded and winking at the brim," and join in the pagan revelry, "with one hand wavin' free." And if Intemperate Excess lead to unholy crapulence, so be it, and let the Devil take the hindmost. In the immortal but not immoral words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I thank the joyful juice/ For all I know."

No hangovers here, except for puppy, exhausted froma visit to friends with 4 children. A warm winter's napshe'll have. Me. Long walk in the crisp air with a few flakes of white here and there. Happy New Yearto all, and may 2013 be better in each one' life.